Every Time
by WiliQueen
Summary: Luke refused to train the tiny ones at first, no matter how Yoda poked at him. So many things he was unsure about, but that was never one of them. Children need to be children. [Spoilers for Episode 7]


He knows this child.

She's not a child, of course, not anymore. She's a young woman, as tall as himself, eyes challenging and pleading and already shadowed by loss.

Luke refused to train the tiny ones at first, no matter how Yoda poked at him. So many things he was unsure about, but that was never one of them. Children need to be children.

Then the First Order gained more and more footholds, and troubling rumors became solid reports. They were taking babies, the strongest and healthiest, never to be seen again. And they were hunting the Force-gifted. He didn't know how, still isn't sure, but word spread through the Republic like wildfire. When they found their way to his doorstep - some with frightened, heartbroken parents, others delivered by Resistance operatives - there was no more room for refusal.

Children need to be children. Luke did his best to make them safe; he would not make them Jedi, until and unless they were ready to choose that path for themselves.

He let them watch training exercises, let them shriek and giggle at the acrobatic feats and flying objects, a joyous distraction to test his students' concentration. He made time to play peek-a-boo or hide-and-seek. He showed them how to shield their blossoming minds and held them when nightmares came.

Did Aunt Beru have any idea what was happening to him, those nights when she comforted a terrified little boy? Her husband's stepmother's orphaned grandson, yet she loved him as her own. He learned to love in that house, and it was love that would save him, every time.

Once, Biggs' older sister dared them to follow her and her friends to Whispering Gulch, where even the Sand People wouldn't camp. "Uncle Owen says it's just the wind," he declared with all the confidence at his six-year-old disposal.

Then he remembered nothing but panic and flames and a looming dark figure, until he found himself at home with a glass of milk in front of him and Aunt Beru's arm around his trembling shoulders. Across the kitchen table, Biggs' eyes were enormous over his own glass, but he still smirked as Owen lectured his sister.

"You sit right there, Talli Darklighter, until your mother gets here. Then you can explain to _her_ why you thought it would be funny to fill these boys' heads with ghost stories."

Luke was fourteen when he learned it was more than a ghost story, that the Sand People avoided the place because a whole camp really had been massacred there. One old-timer told him they believed a demon had come out of the desert and might do it again. Another said it was simple respect for the dead, though everyone else scoffed at the suggestion that their nomadic neighbors would have such a concept. Nobody was sure exactly what had happened.

"No surprise your uncle didn't want you boys out there," the first man told him. "Guess he knows as much about it as anybody; it was around the time your grandmother died."

When he came home on that fateful day years later, the smell of burning bodies shouldn't have been familiar, but it was.

He trusts the Force, always, though it's hard when it shows such things to the small and innocent. He also knows beyond a doubt that it's why he wasn't a greasy stain on the wall of Beggar's Canyon before he was seventeen.

In the heady, hopeful early days of the revived Republic, he never foresaw that his sister and his best friend would produce such a serious child. Though he shied away from hugs, little Ben occupied his mother's lap whenever he could. And when Luke least expected it, there would be a tug on his robe, and a tiny solemn face would be turned up to him, the soft wool clutched in both little fists.

When Leia sent him to stay and train, Luke was not prepared for the sullen, withdrawn boy who shuffled out of the _Falcon_ , all gawky angles and guarded scowl under a mop of thick dark hair.

He was there because his parents were worried about him, Luke explained, and they hoped it would help him find his way. It didn't mean he _must_ become a Jedi. The choice was his. Whether Ben ever believed that, believed there was any real choice when you were born to the Skywalker legacy... Well. Luke didn't always believe it himself, so who could blame the boy?

For a time he seemed to thrive on the discipline. All too soon, though, impatience became frustration became rage. One day Ben spent laser-focused hours building an elaborate sand castle, the Force sculpting details no hands could have. Then a rock flew astray from another student's practice and knocked off one small gravity-defying turret.

Sand exploded in all directions, leaving a crater in the beach and a dozen shocked - and in some cases bruised - young people. Ben stared for a moment at what he had done, then bolted up the hill toward the living quarters.

Luke found him curled in a ball of misery against the courtyard fountain, ignoring the three toddlers gathered around him while their minder looked on uncertainly.

"Ben. Ben. Ben," the littlest repeated, patting his unruly hair. She ran over to Luke and pointed. "Ben _sad_."

"I know, sunshine. You're a good helper."

While the minder herded the little ones inside, Luke sat down next to his nephew and waited. Finally a ragged voice emerged from where his face was hidden. "It's not fair. You work and work to make things, and somebody else breaks them. They shouldn't be able to do that."

When Luke said nothing, Ben went on, "They don't even listen to Mom in the Senate anymore. They say stupid empty things about how she and you and Dad saved the galaxy, but they don't care what she says at all. What good does it do to know what's right if everybody just does whatever they want?"

How did you explain the importance of freedom to a boy who had never known the galaxy without it? That was Leia's forte, but she was the one who had sent her son to him.

After that, Ben kept to himself more than ever, in spite of renewed attempts at friendship by some of the very same kids who had witnessed his dramatic loss of control. Luke had never been more proud of them. Still, there were the days when he found the boy in the courtyard during his free time, letting the little ones clamber over him as if he were some strange piece of furniture that moved on its own. He was calm on those days, sometimes even smiled.

It was love that would save them, every time.

Until the day it didn't.

He reaches toward the proffered lightsaber, and the images come in fragments, and he doesn't know whether he or the girl is more surprised.

 _Parrek Vanu, quick-witted, small for fifteen, who could hide his presence from anyone. Stretching his abilities to mask the little girl already wedged behind a fallen tree. Cries of fear and pain, the slash and sizzle of a lightsaber._

 _A ship careening and lurching._

 _A strange place, bright and hot and dry, full of strange people. "I'm not Parrek anymore, okay? I'm Squib. And if anybody talks to you, don't tell them your name. You're no one. Can you remember that?" A solemn nod. "I'm going to get us a transport. Stay here, and I'll come back for you. I promise."_

 _Parrek marched, hands bound behind his back, into a shuttle that flew away._

He knows this child, this ray of sunshine, who always climbed fearlessly to the highest point she could find.

He will know this woman, this ray of hope, who has left her hiding place at last and climbed to the top of his, all for love of people she's only just begun to know.

It's love that will save them. Every time.


End file.
